The issue comes down to the rights of the whole as opposed to the rights of the parts, but in much of the Western world, we’ve concluded that the two are inseparable. But what does this have to do with my last post? Sluttiness is a form of destructive individualism. It passes itself off as free speech, but what value does it add to any discourse? It’s instead nihilistic, its particular statement being that I live in the mud, so won’t you join me? It is born of depravity and seeks to make the unthinkable commonplace until there is no place left to descend. Is this what we want for our children? Did all those people who dropped my blog truly believe that the evil lies within me rather than with the women whose photographs I posted? Do they really favor a society whose only standard of decency is tolerance for everyone except those who, like myself, argue that if no limits are placed upon tolerance, the result is a fall to the bottom because nothing is unthinkable once the public gets used to it? In Rome, people were murdered for entertainment; in Europe, they were burned at the stake; in America, indigenous peoples were shot for target practice. Such is the proclivity of our species for evil. Yet, we in the modern West somehow imagine that we’ve outstripped every people of every era in terms of civilized values and behaviors, and so, for us, it’s ever upward and onward, but does such “freedom” as I depicted look “upward” to you? The following words are from the first amendment to the Bill of Rights:

“Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech…”

Do you imagine that the writers defined freedom as indecency, vulgarity, and profanity, and that their vision for America was that it be a place where people could, without censure, say, do, and look anyway they pleased, and be respected for it in the name of “women’s right,” “honoring diversity,” and so forth; and that anyone who doesn’t respect them deserves condemnation for being intolerant, intolerance being the only sin that America has left? What most people define as tolerance, I regard as nothing more than a non-standard by which any indecency is acceptable without anyone being held accountable.

Whatever became of words like honor and dignity? Margaret Deland and Phillips Brooks, moral spokespeople for the late 19th century, put a constant emphasis on facing life’s challenges with virtue, and freely embraced such terms as “manly” and “good woman,” manly and good, that is, in the sense of caring for others, being honest even when the cost was high, and bearing life’s hurts with dignity. In short, being honorable. When is the last time you heard anyone speak of honor, and who do you regard as possessing dignity? We have become a society that lives in filth and triviality, but we don’t call it that. Instead, we refer to it with pride as freedom and individuality. Who are the moral spokespeople of today; that is, who represents what you would want yourself or your children to be—Donald Trump, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Caitlin Jenner, Kim Kardashian, Bernie Sanders? Anyone?

After losing those 22 followers, I can but wonder how my standards can be so despised that looking like the women in my last post is presumably acceptable but calling them what I believe them to be is considered that worst sin of all—intolerance, and we all know that a truly tolerant society cannot tolerate intolerance because to take intolerance seriously would force us to examine our standards and, perhaps, ask ourselves how deep into the mud we want to slide. Oh but the mud is so smooth, so warm, so unresisting. No one need struggle if their goal is to wallow in the mud, except, that is, against those who tell them they’re wrong. Label me sexist, and you need not consider what I have to say. No matter that my criticisms of nearly all men were far more scathing than my criticisms of certain women, “hating” men is politically correct, but “hating” women, why that’s like “hating” Moslems or black people, groups that are beyond criticism no matter how much evil they collectively do. Ah, but then there are those other groups—white males, old people, ranchers, loggers, white Southerners, Christians, atheists (most of all atheists) Republicans, and anyone else who can be identified overtly or through “micro-aggressions”* as reactionaries, intolerant haters, or out of the mainstream. They are wrong simply because they exist; and every tolerant person knows that there can be no tolerance for those who, by their very nature, swim against the current.

*From Wikipedia: "Psychologist Derald Wing Sue defines microaggressions as 'brief, everyday exchanges that send
denigrating messages to certain individuals because of their group
membership.' Sue describes microaggressions as generally happening below the level of awareness of well-intentioned members of the dominant culture."